Monday, April 22, 2013

Floored by Flooring Designs and Film Decor

"I went to brush something off my cheek and it was the floor." -Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe first lived at the Hobart Arms, on Franklin Avenue near North Kenmore Avenue (in The Big Sleep), but then moved to the Bristol Hotel, where he stayed for about ten years. By 1950 (in The Long Goodbye) he has rented a house on Yucca Avenue and continued at the same place in early 1952 in Playback, the last full-length Chandler Marlowe novel.

“He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway.” ―Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

"On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis." -Playback (Chapter 8)

"Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles." -The High Window (Raymond Chandler)

Marlowe PI's office, originally on the 7th floor of an unnamed building in 1936, is at #615 on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building by March/April 1939 (the date of Farewell, My Lovely), which is on Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar. North Ivar Avenue is between North Cahuenga Boulevard to the west and Vine Street to the east. The office telephone number is GLenview 7537. Marlowe's office is modest and he doesn't have a secretary (unlike Sam Spade). He generally refuses to take divorce cases. A chess adept, he almost exclusively plays against himself, or plays games from books.

Rick's smoky cafe in Casablanca, Lincoln's office at the White House of the 1860s, or the Mos Eisley cantina on the desert planet of Tatooine: A production designer came up with the overall look of those movie sets. But the booze on Rick's bar or the pens on Lincoln's desk — it took a set decorator and a crew to make them look authentic and believable.

Set decorators have many ways to find the objects that make their movies feel real. In particular, they rely on rental facilities like the Warner Brothers Prop House in Burbank, Calif. It has four floors — each the size of a football field. It's like walking through the furniture department of the biggest department store you've ever seen. On the upper floors there's contemporary furniture, antiques, chandeliers, draperies, flags, artwork, statues, kitchen and bath stuff — you name it, they have it. "Everything you see on TV and film," says manager and former set decorator Robert Greenfield, "we have at least one of them."

Gaffin spies her favorite chair. "I've used this chair in every movie I've ever done," she says. She lists some of them — the first two Iron Man films, The Pursuit of Happyness. It's an easily recognizable Eames lounge chair with brown leather cushions and molded plywood. Source: www.npr.org

Do you want to renew your room's floor? Do you need help choosing the right flooring options for your home? If you are looking for a professional solution with a wide assortment of practical ideas or restoring your previous flooring, you will be able to transform any room of your home into a media room or home theater. In foulksflooring-america.com you will find materials that reflect light and sound and choose hardwood which combines with other furniture pieces for an affordable budget.

In the case of choosing carpeting for your floors, be sure to choose one that is also soft and comfortable to sit on, especially if you plan to play video games in the room or have children in the home. You can add a few beanbag chairs or floor pillows. There is carpeting that is specifically designed for media rooms and home theaters. Your choices of Color: Overall, the carpet color should be dark, which will absorb the light from the screen instead of reflecting it.